


A Sacred Blue or a Smart Kid

by MagicalTreeStump



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Exploitation, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Original Character(s), Possible Character Death, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-26 00:19:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalTreeStump/pseuds/MagicalTreeStump
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world falls to a virus causing the dead to reanimate.</p><p>Pete, 17 years old and the face of the New Order, is left to protect the abandoned west from the living dead all while he has to cope with the severity of his mental state. Patrick—Pete’s angel, his saviour—hates everything about Pete. It’s only when he realises exactly how sick Pete is that things start to change.</p><p> </p><p>It’s not hard, in the end, to figure out what he should have done differently in his past life. He thinks about the girls he thought he was in love with, when he got locked in the boys changing room during PE and forced himself to touch, to pretend to love—no, the pinnacle event was so long before those simple mistakes that he almost forgot it happened. Except, he couldn’t forget what he had done. He had let himself become unrecognisable that his own reflection stopped refusing to make sense. It began to terrify him instead.</p><p>A hand grabs Pete’s own and he’s shaken out of his thoughts. Patrick looks down at Pete, a pitying expression playing on his face and the hollow shadow of ‘like’ glazed across his features. Patrick is a devious, inhuman creature and he drags Pete behind him out of the room, saying, “Pete, we need to talk.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sacred Blue or a Smart Kid

**Author's Note:**

> Pete and Patrick are the only two characters from bandom in this fic as of yet. A lot of the characters are loosely based off of some band guys, though. I might edit this later to add Joe, Andy and various others into this.  
> The Clergy was originally based on Gerard Way. Andy is an omc, not Andy Hurley, but you can read him whichever way you please.
> 
> This is based off of my 2012 nanowrimo, so if at some points Pete sounds like a seventeen year old girl, that's because originally he was.

The sun is bright and comes shining through the windscreen of the van. Above him, Pete can see bright white clouds tinted yellow and light pink by the rising sun. It reminds him of her.

Pete stretches and checks the back of the van out of paranoia-built habit, and everything is just as it should be. Guns, ammunition, fuel, enough food and water to last him for a while, and his spare dirty clothes shoved onto the bench seat as a makeshift pillow. He doesn’t sleep often in the back, despite it being so much more comfortable. Usually he’s too tired and out of it to make it back there. Half the time it’s not safe to even consider it, but he takes what he’s given, even if it’s trading a quick getaway for a comfortable night’s sleep.

Pete has to wipe the sleep from his eyes and let his head rest on his hands for a few short moments before he can push himself to continue driving. The highway is easy to find, having parked his car on a long-since abandoned road that leads to a small village in one direction, and a slip road in the other. The highway glitters underneath the sun; it was surprisingly clear out that day. Just two days before, when he was farther to the east, the sides of the road were strewn with the twisted metal wrecks that had once been cars. Trapped inside were people who could have easily been his friends; motionless bodies tucked into the sleeping sand, killed when they were still mortal. They were nowhere near the cars, their faces still intact, unable to have been smashed through windscreens. Their torsos were ripped open. The smell of rotting flesh was heavy in the air, only made worse by the relentless, suffocating heat.

He’s been through three straight days of sights like that, and now, as he makes his way down the highway, the only thing Pete can see is tarmac beginning to fall apart underneath the wheels of his car. He picks up speed and tries not to think about why the west is so different.

~~

 

It takes him about four hours to reach the outermost edge of the city. He leaves his car on a small road, which is tucked away and hidden from the rest of the world, really nothing more than a dirt track. It’s concealed by small trees and overgrown bushes. No one would be able to see it if they weren’t looking out for it, and no one is really in a position to be looking for it. It’s the perfect hiding place.

Pete climbs out the car and lifts his hands up to touch the sky. His fingers drag over clouds and cracks, looking for faults, hoping to scratch away the cheap cobalt blue and reveal the warped, chaotic images of stars and galaxies.

Maybe there are other worlds out there, he thinks. Maybe they’re going through the same hell that we are.

The desert ends where Pete’s standing; gentle wind causes sand to graze what little skin he has on show.

He’s seventeen years old. This isn’t how he imagined his life to be.

He gets what he needs from the van—ammunition, food, water, matches and a torch—and shoves them inside a small canvas backpack, all taking their place alongside whatever is left in there from before. He straps a small radio to his belt, which does everything but work, and pulls his backpack on. He places a pistol in a holster around his waist and slings a gun over his shoulder by a strap. If he was lucky, and if what they said in the east was true, he wouldn’t need more than one gun. Better safe than sorry, though; Pete would be a dead man soon if he was as dumb as he was careless.

He locks the door when he’s finished. It’s doubtful that anyone would come out this far, but the risk of stragglers finding the van is too great to chance leaving it unlocked.

He walks.

~~

There is a hollow in his chest. It is dark and cold and his thoughts are corrupted just like the thing inside his head. It whispers to him things about another world beyond this one that he will never know. It tells him that he was always meant to be this way. He was meant to be this sick and twisted inside. It tells him that he was always going to die like this; cold, heartless, alone.

~~

 

The city skyline looms before him. It’s not as great as some of the ones Pete has seen but it’s definitely something to behold. It’s familiar and ever present; something brand new and forgotten, all at once. It would be grander, he presumes, if it weren’t for the great expanses of rubble separating mansions and exquisite houses from the north west of the city. The ocean peaks out from behind still standing skyscrapers. The bombs had hit here first, and they certainly hit here the worst, but miraculously, buildings still stand defiantly amongst all the chaos.

Pete walks down a road lined with buildings that are only just holding on. The streets are full of ghosts; they talk and whisper and they walk, and carry on with their old lives, not knowing the danger that they are so constantly surrounded by.

The ignorance of these ghosts stings. Pete wishes he was like them. A long time ago he almost was. The sickness in his head doesn’t count any more than it used to.

The bombs they dropped weren’t nuclear. The government didn’t want to risk destroying the greatest country on earth, even if it meant saving the world. They had fought so hard for their freedom, so why would they let it fall for a silly little disease?

It reminds Pete of photographs he saw from the Blitz, back when London had been bombed in the Second World War but they still carried on in defiance. Back when they were fighting something tangible and something real. There was a distinct enemy. They had a reason and a moral high ground. Now, they’re fighting merely for a less than pleasing survival. It’s barely worth the thought, let alone the active motion of going to war with old dead friends.

Anyone Pete sees could be the enemy and neither one may know it. He wonders if they were always going to turn out this way. They were always going to bring about the end of the world, Pete knew that, but he never thought it would come down to this.

He shakes his head. No, he thinks. We were always going to turn out so much worse than this. At least we’re not fighting our demise in the way we had originally thought.

~~

The streets are dull. The sun is high in the sky. Pete’s on red alert.

He’s looking for someone, but he doesn’t know who, exactly. Pete’s been looking for him for months, maybe even a year, now. She of all people deserves to have clarity over all the things that happened during the panic. He deserves to know, even if he abandoned her in thoughts of himself.

Gunshots fire in the distance. Pete stops walking for a split second, swings his gun round so he can hold it properly, slams the safety off and sets off running before he can even think about what he’s doing. He needs to see what’s going on. He’s here to keep the peace, after all. This is his job. He can’t abandon the people he’s come to hate any more.

He rounds a corner and can see grotesque, shuffling figures. Some of them with stiff, jolted movements from being undead and reanimated for so long. The rest are quicker, more certain of their movements in their unlife. They all look and lust for the same thing.

A man kneels behind a car, fumbling and slow as he reloads his gun. He’s clearly nervous, but who wouldn’t be?

Pete breaks into a sprint, his footsteps heavy on the thick tarmac road. He vaults easily over a car in his way, using his left arm to give him momentum and his right to hold his gun tight. It’s safe to say that he attracts the attention of both the man and the undead.

Pete darts through the bodies drawing attention away from the man; it’s reckless but it works. He raises his gun, turns so he’s walking backwards, aims and fires in practiced movements. Some of them fall to the ground almost immediately, with stunned groans following the loud shots of his gun. The air smells like rotting flesh and hot, sharp metal.

By now, the man is done reloading and starts firing at will, quickly overcoming his initial shock of Pete flying over the car. His aim is precise but lazy. He isn’t as quick or as certain as others Pete has met and takes a while to come around and get into the swing of things. It’s like he thinks that he’ll never be out of time.

The gun fire doesn’t last forever and a sea of the now (thankfully) dead undead separates them. Pete can see the guy clearly now.

The guy looks unimpressed. He’s only just shorter than Pete, and has blond-verging-on-ginger hair that looks golden when it catches the light. His eyes are tired and sad, but they still find the time to look like every colour under the sun. The colours all warp together to make a blue-green more sacred than the ocean. High, prominent cheekbones shape an otherwise soft face and full lips. He looks like something you’d find in a magazine, like someone who should be on stage with a guitar slung over his shoulders instead of a gun.

Pete must look a mess in comparison. He’s short and skinny, with greasy black hair and light brown eyes. Fading purple bruises adorn the side of his face; he must look as hopeless as he feels with his scars on full display. He quickly shoves his sleeves down, but there’s little help in that now. The guy’s eyes have already trailed his way down Pete’s arms and the doubtful, unimpressed look changes into one of sympathy. The look is gone in an instant though, and his face is free of any inkling of what he’s thinking. Whatever it is, Pete hopes it’s good.

The guy breaks out of his curious gaze eventually. Something inside Pete sinks.

“Hi,” they guy says, sounding suddenly out of breath. He looks around at the bodies surrounding us, like he suddenly can’t comprehend what he’s just done.

“Hey,” Pete says back.

“How’d you do the car thing?” the guy asks, motioning toward the car in question.

“Once you’ve been to the east you kind of just learn whatever it takes to save yourself. Even if it means jumping over cars or from rooftops.”

“Rooftops?”

Pete nods.

“Right.” The guy pauses. “But you weren’t saving yourself; you were doing the exact opposite if anything. You put yourself in danger for a helpless stranger in the middle of the street. I could be infected for all you know!”

The words sting. Pete pushes it aside.

“But you’re not, are you. You don’t look it—”

“Well neither do you!”

“—which is a good thing, isn’t it? The guy who has just saved your life isn’t about to turn into a zombie and try to eat you. Thank fucking God for that man. As I was saying, you would have changed by now. I’ve seen it enough times to know. Trust me, you’re not infected. It’s my job to help people, even if it means I get killed.”

The guy laughs. “Wait, you mean you’re a runner? You barely look old enough to drink; why would anyone trust you with something like that?”

“Shut up. Someone thought it was a bright idea to shove a gun in my hand and tell me to try and save the world. I don’t think they noticed that it already fell.”

“Yeah, must have slipped their minds. I’m guessing I’m obliged to offer you a place to stay while you’re here? We’ve had passers-by stay with us before, but never a runner. It’s like they think it’s okay to just abandon the west altogether.”

“If you can manage it I’ll be happy to have a place to stay for a few nights. We kind of leave the west to itself while the east is like it is. Like, we still come here to make sure everything’s under control, but we usually stick as close to the east as we can get without putting ourselves in danger.”

“We noticed as much. You have no idea what you’ve been missing out on over here,” he rolls his eyes. “You won’t impose or anything. We’ve got enough for a while. You don’t need to stick a label to yourself to know what you’re doing. We should get going anyway, I know the sun is a long way till it sets, but it’s better safe than—”

“Than running for your life in the dark as a hoard of zombies chases you, I got it,” Pete says and motions for the guy to walk.

“I was going to say sorry, but. I guess that’ll work too,” he sighs, and begins to walk in the direction of the mansions.

Pete can see the guy glancing back at where Pete’s standing every so often. It’s obvious that the guy doesn’t trust him in the slightest, despite the easy conversation they made. It’s understandable, though. Strangers are a thing to be wary of, especially now. If anything, it should be he who is wary, he threw himself in the way of danger just to help some guy who couldn’t care less. It was his job to help people but even then it didn’t mean doing what he had done for this guy, and yet he had done it all the same.

~~

It started with a wedding over a thousand hours, months, years ago. Or maybe it had been five years, but it had felt like a lifetime all the same.

Your bride was beautiful—hair like pink champagne and electric blue eyes that shined brighter than anything. She was tall and skinny and just the right amount of fucked up that made her okay. She was twenty one, young, dumb and reckless. You were a mirror image of her nerves.

You had run away from your home the night before. Still in college and still living with your parents, you didn’t care for anything apart from her, and you knew she felt the same. You could be broke, homeless and starving and you wouldn’t care as long as you were with her.

You didn’t have a care in the world. You were going to make it work.

(That night when you kiss her you tell her you love her.

She smiles and says, “I love you too.” It sounds like a whisper in the dark.)

When you get back home and go your separate ways you pretend nothing significant has happened. It’s only after dinner that you tell your parents what happened. They’re shocked and angry and they shout at you for hours on end. You tell them that you know this is it for you. She’s the one. They haven’t even met her yet but you know it with all your heart. She’s the one.

You get plane tickets to a brand new place and run away with her. Glasgow isn’t anything glamorous, but she went there when she was younger and you know how much she loves it.

When you come back you and she buy an apartment in the city by an underground station. On your first night in that brand new world of no more secret nights spent sneaking out (you’ll miss those nights forever. You don’t tell her that, though), the city has a blackout.

You break onto the rooftop and watch the sky for shooting stars, knowing never again will you get the chance. Every time you see one you wish on it. Each time it’s the same with. You smile, hold her hand and forget about everything else. You have forever to spend with her. 

Or maybe, in a way, it started with a car crash.

You read about it in the newspaper when you were in Glasgow. It happened the day you got married. A twelve year old boy lost his mind and his father but it was just another bad thing to happen to someone undeserving from where you were standing. An innocent bystander who had been three thousand miles away at the time, you had no idea how much pain that family was in and you didn’t care. You were twenty one, young, dumb and reckless. You only cared about her. No-one could blame you for your one track mind.

~~

The guy takes Pete to the mansions he had seen from the desert. The house is at the end of the road and on top of a rolling hill. Once upon a time the house there would have looked over the city. Now, to one side is the ashy rubble and remains of a large portion of the city and to the other, beyond buildings still standing, is the desert. The ocean is still visible here, as bright blue and transfixing as it would have been in any other time.

The house is surrounded by a tall metal fence and has a fair bit of land which, Pete can’t help but notice, has been ripped up to reveal brown earth formed in uneven lines. There are two cars sitting in the drive way—one has been ripped apart so that the chassis and engine are the only parts still intact, the other is dented and dirty but otherwise fine.

The inside of the house is somewhat of an anti-climax. The walls of the hallway are painted a stark white and the white stone floor makes it feel almost clinical. Pete shudders at the thought, pushes it away.

The guy shuts and locks the door behind them before pushing Pete through an archway to reveal the living room and kitchen. The room is more homely, but still the overbearing sensation of wrong, wrong, wrong hangs in the air.

There are two couches facing opposite each other in the end closest to where Pete is standing, a TV sits between the couches in front of the large glass wall that covers the entire length of the room. The kitchen is much more lived in, with pans and dishes covering the sides. There are newspapers on the island that separates the kitchen and the living room, and books are stacked up in piles. It feels like a home, and maybe that’s why Pete finds it so wrong.

On the couch facing the door sits a guy who can’t be much older than Pete is. His skin tanned and clean, with tattoos pulled tight around his bicep. He wore ripped skinny jeans and an old vest, and his brown greasy hair should be disgusting, but somehow he made it all work for him. He looks tired and worn out. A large, deep cut sits on top of one cheekbone and the skin around it is bruised purple and yellow.

He looks up at Pete and the guy when their footsteps sound on the floor. His eyes lock with Pete’s and he stops playing the acoustic guitar he had in his lap. He shifts his gaze in an instant to look behind Pete.

“What’s up, Pat?” he says, his voice rough as it cuts the air. “What did the cat drag in this time?”

“Johnny,” the guy, Pat, says. “this is… uh. He’s a runner, or he says he is, it’s the least I could do, letting him stay here I mean.”

Johnny looks at Pat and the two share a look before Johnny lets out a laugh that sounds only have forced.

“Wow, it’s good to know he left such an impression on you that you didn’t bother to learn his name. You are such a good person, I am so glad you’re here.”

Pete looks at Johnny and Pat and they’re still staring intently at each other. Having an argument without the need for words.

“Fine,” Johnny eventually says. “I’m Johnny, resident psychopath with absolutely no talent, life skills or sense of self-preservation. It’s just lovely to meet you. This,” he gestures to Pat, “is Patrick, call him Pat and he will kill you. I’m the only one allowed to do that. And, uh, you are?”

Pete smiles slightly. At least Johnny seems to like him. “I’m Pete,” he says.

“You’re a runner, yeah? Are you one of the first?” Johnny looks at Pete, his eyes wide and hopeful.

Pete just shrugs non-committedly. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, they gave me a name, and it was a couple months before everything fell apart.”

Johnny looks expectant. Patrick looks bored but something in his eyes betray him when he risks casting a glance over at Pete, who is looking at him.

Pete sighs and knows he’s going to have to explain everything all over again. “It was in the beginning, I think, back when The Clergy was in charge of training and the divisions and everything else. I stumbled across them when I was searching for a place that wasn’t the desert. They taught me how to tell if someone was infected and then told me that not everyone showed symptoms. They showed me how to fire guns as well as I can now and they told me that we would be able to win this thing. They called it a war and it was ridiculous, because what are we even fighting against if not ourselves?

“But, they fixed up my van, which was a blessing; and they gave me fuel for my journeys, packed the boot full of ammunition and guns, gave me supplies that I didn’t even know I needed, and then told me to go and make sure other places were safe. They told me to look for the survivors hiding amongst the ruins of bombed and broken cities. They told me to kill the living dead and make sure they stayed that way…” Pete’s voice, which had become loud and clear with the anger and passion that he spoke with tapered away and quietened. He felt nothing but regret as he took another breath to carry on.

“They told me to execute the infected to stop the world from being overrun. And that was their reason, of all the things, that was their reason. They took away my medication and said that it would help me do what I was meant to do. Apparently keeping me detached and disconnected from myself would help me do what they wanted of me. They made me look for cracks in the sky and in the ground and in smiles of strangers and in the blood of my enemies, just so I could anchor myself to something.

“They called me Zed and when I asked them why they shook their heads, smiled and said, ‘Because you’re the last, kid. You’re the last kid on earth.’”

Pete doesn’t realise he’s crying until right then after he stopped speaking, it was only now that he could feel the burning press of heat behind his eyes. He feels ashamed and looks away from Patrick, ducking his head down and wiping his face with his sleeve. He looks up again, embarrassed about what these two strangers had seen him do, and sees Johnny looking giddy on the couch, guitar slumped on the ground as he tries to figure out what exactly he wants to do with his hands.

Pete glances towards Patrick once again to find Patrick looking at him. Patrick has stopped looking like he did before. He looks much smaller and kinder now that the wash of slow burning hatred and dislike has flown away. Instead he tries a small smile, which looks more nervous than reluctant. Pete still finds him hard to read, but now he’s being less stand-offish he makes everything simpler and quieter. The loudness surrounding him has faded and is instead replaced by hopeful eyes and a sympathetic smile.

It’s a nice change, Pete thinks. It suits him.

Johnny’s voice tears Pete’s gaze away from Patrick. “What caused them to fall?” he asks.

“What?” Patrick says instead of Pete.

Johnny glances between the two of them. “The runners fell, which everyone knows, but no-one really knows why they did.”

“Oh, right,” Patrick says.

Pete clears his throat, wipes his face again. “It’s a lot of little things, really. Or, a lot of things that seem like little things, but really aren’t. Like, I think most people think that The Clergy leaving was probably why the runners disappeared off the face of the earth, but it’s more that The Clergy leaving kept them around. He wasn’t too happy about what we had become and when he left he took with him the runners that believed that too. The other runners disbanded, but The Clergy made sure to keep everyone who wanted to actually do some good around long enough to start the new order; the second coming of runners, if you will.”

Patrick laughs suddenly at this. Pete ignores him and carries on.

“But even if The Clergy had stayed the runners would have fallen apart. It wasn’t that the leader left that they fell; it was more like the leader had nothing tangible to lead. Or, the runners had rules but the rules weren’t good. Like, it went from executing the infected to murdering those who weren’t even close to being so. And they didn’t seem to understand that the entire core of their being was wrong. It wasn’t just the zombies who were monsters. They were nothing compared to us. They did what they did to survive. We killed the innocent because it made us seem like we were doing something more. And yeah, we did some good, but not enough in comparison.

“And then when I was in LA and I met a girl—”

“You were in LA?” Patrick interrupts.

Pete nods. “Yeah, but, like, not for long. I left pretty quick. It’s a mess, barely any of it is still standing and I’m not even sure if there’s anyone else there. But I met a girl and I probably could have spent the rest of my life fighting the undead with her, and I had barely known her, and then she had to go and get herself killed and I’ve never forgiven myself for that. That was the last straw for me, knowing that I could have done something to stop her from dying but knowing what was going on. The old order fell pretty soon after I left and then The Clergy founded the new order before he retired and disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Patrick frowns and Pete has no idea why. It’s then that Patrick moves in a way that makes the sunlight hit him and reflect off the ring on his finger and oh, right. It hits Pete like a ton of bricks, because Patrick is wearing a ring and there’s no-one else here except them. Right.

“But people managed to leave LA, right? Even after the bombs hit?” Johnny asks, realising Patrick’s distress.

“Yeah,” Pete nods. “A lot of people headed east, some went to the desert and a few are still holding up in the city, waiting.” That doesn’t seem to help much because all of a sudden Patrick is crying and shouting, and he goes to throw a punch at Pete but misses and falls forwards instead. Pete catches him, and instead of trying to get away he holds Pete tight and doesn’t let go.

“Fuck you fuck you fuck you,” Patrick says, voice muffled by Pete’s shirt.

Pete doesn’t say anything in return, just holds onto Patrick like he’s the only thing in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I know I'm not very good at writing, but this has been sitting on my computer untouched for far too long! Updates will be slow as I'm doing highers right now and the workload is insane. I do have a lot of this written though, so this hasn't been abandoned no matter how infrequent updates might get.
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


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